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Uniquely Us: Gracefully Navigating the Maze of Neurodiverse Marriage, Autism and Faith
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June 5, 2026
Read for work. Disclaimer: I’m not part of a couple, neurodiverse or otherwise, so take this review with as large a pinch of salt as you desire. While I’ve majored on areas of disagreement with the authors (as there’s always more to talk about when you disagree than when you agree!) there is some benefit here, but there are some elements I take issue with. I’ve had to cut a considerable amount of my points, as I had more to say than GR would allow! I believe the authors are people of good will who want to help, but there are too many issues with this book to ignore.
(If you’re looking for my TL;DR, just scroll down to the conclusion.)
◦ Very high academic tone; quite hard to read most of the time. Like reading a paper, except for occasional digressions into personal stories, which were a welcome relief.
◦ Excerpts from podcast interviews included without cleaning up their grammar and punctuation, however, making them hard to parse.
◦ Refers to the ‘controversy’ over Hans Asperger, which is an interesting way to describe him being a nasty little Nazi sympathiser who sent children he deemed ‘imbecilic’ and a burden to their parents to their deaths at Am Spielgrund euthanasia clinic. Have a read of his referral notes for Herta and Elisabeth; he knew exactly what he was doing. No need to be so cautious when referring to him.
◦ Acronyms! NA/NT and AS/ND drove me crazy. How hard is it to just write 'autistic' and 'neurotypical'?! Either that, or pick one – use ‘NT’ and ‘ND’ rather than two other acronyms as well. I kept getting confused as to which was supposed to be which in my head. They didn't increase clarity; they added to confusion and made the book as a whole harder to read.
◦ I found the study interviewing non-autistic sisters of autistic women interesting. I am one of those sisters and found the description 'close, non-primary caregiver' to encapsulate my role entirely. Although, my neurodiverse sister is much younger than me, which contributes to this dynamic.
◦ I will say, though, the chapter on women who are autistic has quite a negative slant to it. It ends on the note that autism is the main factor causing one woman to verbally abuse her husband (I think there might be other factors at play here, autism does not cause abusive behaviours!), and has an excerpt from Stephanie and Dan's ADHD daughter Erica, which seems to scold their other autistic daughter, Erica's sister, for being hurtful with her communication.
Certainly, autistic people can be blunt, and it is not always on the non-autistic family member to just have tougher skin. They do need to learn how to interact with others who will not have the same level of tolerance. However, I'd have liked a chance for their autistic daughter to have a say here as well.
Autistic people are often highly sensitive, love hard, and hate to hurt their loved ones, but they're not usually aware they're doing it. To end the chapter by scolding autistic women specifically, as if they're all equally likely to verbally abuse their loved ones (when no such accusation has been levelled at autistic men), seems unfair and sexist to me.
◦ I roll my eyes at the usual Christian repeating of the entirely invented notion that joy and happiness are different things. The words are synonymous. Any distinction is assigned to the words, not inherent to their dictionary definition.
◦ Like the bit about healthy correction over shame-based. Yes.
◦ Yikes. It took me 5min of Googling to find that David Rowland, cited as 'a controversial name in autism research' is in fact a quack who believes vaccines cause autism. It's right there as a PDF on his scammy-looking website. He also says autistic people do not feel fear (tbf, the authors say they disagree with him here), and that autistic people feel no emotion at all and there is no autistic spectrum, among other things. It's very hard to see why the authors take his brain research at face value if these are the kinds of conclusions he comes to. One star lost for citing this guy at all.
◦ OK, so later on, the authors are basically using 'joy' as a synonym for relational connectedness. Why not just say connectedness then, when that's what you mean?
◦ Noticing a number of minor spelling and grammar errors as I move through the book. As an editor, I am aware of how difficult these can be to catch, but it does not reflect well on Morgan James Publishing that a noticeable number of these were not caught.
◦ Like the emphasis on long-term behaviour change, not quick fixes.
◦ The authors quote uncritically these words from Wilder and Warner: ‘Developments in modern brain science have made it clear that any model of transformation and character change must be anchored in the development of a love bond with God and His people’. So non-Christians are doomed to bad relationships where meaningful change is not possible, then? The idea that only Christians can achieve a good neurodiverse marriage strikes me as discriminatory. Not to mention untrue, given that in the previous chapter, the double ND couple who appeared to have the healthiest relationship of the three was the one where the couple walked away from the church.
◦ I am sorry for what Stephanie went through in her marriage and parenting, and admire her courage to share so freely in this chapter. However, it sounds like, from an outside perspective, what was causing a lot of the issues were (a) toxic patriarchal gender roles within the church that she didn’t feel she measured up to (who does, btw?) and (b) an unsupportive school system refusing to make reasonable adjustments for their daughter. I had the impression that Dan’s undiagnosed autism had caused most of the problems. This does not appear, from Stephanie’s telling, to be accurate.
As with the two unhappy couples in the previous chapter, contrasted with the couple who had moved away from the church and its toxic influence re gender roles, it sounds like religious patriarchy was the major cause of relational strain within the authors’ marriage. It also sounds like moving state and educational system and dismantling patriarchal narratives taught them by the church were a large part of what changed things. I don’t want to undermine the importance of a neurodiversity diagnosis (it’s a good thing to have confirmation), but frankly, it doesn’t sound like it was the main problem.
◦ p94 Sheila Gregoire mentioned! Glad her excellent ministry was of benefit to the authors. (It is worth noting that Sheila and her daughter Rebecca Lindenbach critique toxic marriage teachings through a critical lens on biblical patriarchy, only lending strength to my assessment above.)
◦ ‘However, no-one can make you feel a certain way. If someone corrects the way you are building a fence or driving a car they cannot make you feel like an idiot.’ (p95). Yeahhh, not in my experience. Without explicitly calling someone an idiot, it is entirely possible to undermine their competence at tasks in a way that makes them feel worthless. Constant, unasked-for critique (even if valid) can tear a person down as much as harsh words.
◦ The authors go on to say that if you perceive critique as control, criticism or contempt, then that is your work to undo that mindset. Well. Not if critique *is* being used as a weapon of control or contempt. This way, the gaslighter can say ‘I’m only providing helpful feedback!’ as they continue to pick away at everything their spouse does. If your spouse has a pattern of critiquing everything you do, even if their stated aim is to make you better, you will likely feel henpecked and bullied. Also, I fundamentally disagree with the categorical statement ‘no-one can make you feel a certain way.’ I just straight-up think that is bullshit, and anyone who has ever been belittled, bullied or gaslit would agree.
◦ Although it’s Brene Brown’s point, I do like the inclusion of the distinction between shame and guilt. (Here are two words which actually do have different meanings!) It’s easy to see how this could be a freeing revelation for both neurodiverse and neurotypical spouses. ‘I’m not broken, built wrong, inherently bad, etc., I just have a different neurotype from my spouse.’ This then distinguishes it from feelings of guilt: ‘I leave too much of the mental load on my spouse’s shoulders because it causes meltdowns for me. I need to apologise and we can figure out a way forward together.’
◦ OK, Dan’s story sheds a bit more light on why his neurodiversity may have added to their marriage problems. Curiosity is great, but so is the realisation that your spouse isn’t a subject to be studied.
◦ I want to know more about ‘nearly strangled the dog’ though. That is concerning – although Dan does admit this was a red line to cross, I am interested in why it was crossed to begin with. Nearly killing an animal is way beyond the normal remit of angry behaviour, and frankly I don’t believe that is connected to his autism, just poor emotional management, which tbf he owns up to. He seems insightful and self-knowing, but my gosh, if my husband had nearly killed our dog, I’d probably separate. Animal abuse is a red flag for me.
◦ Again, somewhat exclusionary language used re setting boundaries – ‘developing a secure identity in Christ is essential when setting and maintaining boundaries.’ This sentence doesn’t need much to fix it, just the words ‘for Christians’ after ‘essential’. Also ‘it’s unloving *not* to set boundaries’, could cause some people with weak or no boundaries to feel guilt, which is not the best way of effecting change in someone.
◦ The majority of stuff on boundaries here is good though.
◦ Not loving the way she equates past trauma and neurodiversity ‘Past trauma or neurodiversity is never an excuse for sinful, unloving behaviour’. (p117). Sure, some of the brain patterns including rejection sensitive dysphoria may be the same, but it’s antithetical to celebrating neurodiversity to act like it’s a problem on the level of past trauma. Sure, I agree with the broad point that there’s no excuse for treating others poorly, but putting them in the same breath is, IMO, harmful.
◦ The godly sorrow/worldly sorrow distinction isn’t my favourite either, particularly when talking about Judas. There’s a whole world of thought and theology to get into about Judas (was he predestined to betray Jesus, therefore how much of a choice did he really have, and is it possible for him to be redeemed?) but adjudicating whether his sorrow was sufficient or not is gross, to put it mildly. Peter doesn’t actually repent and receive forgiveness until confronted with the risen Jesus. Peter is sorry, sure, but so is Judas; the major difference is that Peter did not take his life. The worst implication here is that suicide is ‘worldly sorrow’ and therefore not sufficient – to which, big yikes. Perhaps that’s not what she meant, but it does rather sound like it.
◦ Really enjoyed the writing style of Carol’s chapter, even if her outlining of examples of autistic communication from the DSM-5 were a bit stereotyped. Perhaps her experience of her husband is that way, but it doesn’t mean all autistic people communicate like that. EG, most autistic people I know understand the meaning of the nonliteral phrase ‘what’s up?’. Some won’t, of course, but again, what’s true for a subset is not true for all, and I’d have liked to see a bit more nuance. The difference between ‘pry/pound the boards’ did make me chuckle, though. I’ve had many an interaction with my autistic sister along those lines.
◦ That being said, ‘we should really open up the house’ is not something that I, as a neurotypical, would take as a directive either. I’m not a fan of indirect communication, and while I am generally not petty enough to play dumb to get someone to be explicit about their request, it is tempting sometimes. (I’m not saying that is what autistic people do – they usually do not get the subtext, as per Greg; they are not being petty.) As a neurotypical, I often do get the subtext, but not always, and because I find indirectness irritating, I might follow up with, ‘Are you saying you want me to open a window, or are you just talking generally?’
Tl;dr, indirectness is confusing and annoying, even if you’re NT – my plea to fellow NTs is, just don’t do this, esp if your partner is on the spectrum.
◦ Excellent quote from Nason, and hits on exactly what I was getting at in the chapter on autistic women. ND people do not intend to be rude when they are blunt, but they do miss implicit meaning, while NTs often impute bad motives to autistic people’s communication because they read into it malign intent that isn’t there.
◦ Re ‘pedantic speech’ – I disagree. Exactness of speech is a common feature of autism, yes, but personally I wouldn’t impute poetic/descriptive turns of phrase to Greg’s autism. Every poet and writer of yesteryear would be autistic, if this were true.
◦ Example 2 on the hike – I am not surprised that Greg felt hurt and offended by Carol’s comment. I wouldn’t see this as being about scripting or NT to ND communication differences – this read as the NT person needling her ND partner about something he’s not good at, for no particular reason. If someone was telling me about their interest in climbing mountains, and I also knew that they couldn’t swim well, would it be kind if I said, ‘So how come you can’t apply that level of discipline to your swimming?’
◦ While most of the chapter is good, I feel like there is a level of pathologizing everything Greg does because he is autistic, and every aspect of his character being traced back to that. I know how annoyed my autistic sister gets when people assume that every part of her personality and communication style can be traced back to her autism. Autistic people are just that: people. I understand that for the NT partner, it can feel like learning about your spouse’s autism after many years is a kind of ‘cheat code’ to understanding them, but not everything they do and say is evidence of autism. Some of it is just their natural quirks and personality traits, which we all have.
◦ ‘Aspie’ is dated language referring to the aforementioned Nazi sympathiser and is rarely used in the UK for that reason. The repeated references to it got on my nerves.
◦ Robin’s chapter is very good and interesting. I liked her 12 points of executive function strength/challenge list. The couple scenarios from her counselling practice are all very useful and interesting too.
◦ There’s a thread here that emerges from especially the last two stories where, like with Stephanie and Dan, although neurodiversity is part of the picture, perhaps the real enemy of these marriages is patriarchy.
◦ The scenario of the NT wife unloading on the ND husband is not a behaviour that should be normalised. I understand how pressure can build up so that the NT person does that, but that’s actually an unhealthy relational behaviour which merits an apology from the NT. I actually think it is not on the ND person to analyse the contents of their partner’s outburst, but on the NT person to communicate properly and kindly.
Again, I am not married, but swap this into any other close relationship: would it be acceptable for a parent, friend or sibling to yell at you about all your faults and for them to not only *not* apologise and have a repair conversation, but expect you to sort through the contents of their outburst for actionable points of change? Tl;dr, be direct and kind, don’t store up resentments.
◦ I don’t really get the sarcasm example. Is he saying he had to give up an aspect of his sense of humour just because his wife found it annoying? That seems like a bridge too far for me.
◦ Jeremy and Charity’s chapter together is mostly good, bar the voice jumps! Half the time I don’t know whether it’s Charity or Jeremy and have to figure out from context. A bit more of an edit would have cleared this up. They come across as a lovely couple though; I love the focus on family joy, on empathy and kindness, asking the ‘why’ behind behaviours, etc.
◦ The ‘actually’ word banning trick is such a great example of helping autistic children communicate better with other people without stigmatising or shaming. Love this.
◦ Love that there is a chapter on the additional challenge of autism diagnosis for non-white families.
◦ Mary’s story seems to have many commonalities with Stephanie’s, and her description of Cassandra syndrome was really impactful. Like Stephanie, though, she mentions the impact of church teachings that she should just have more sex, be submissive etc to fix the marriage. How might we untwist the seams of what is a marriage challenge strictly caused by undiagnosed neurodiversity and what is caused by patriarchal marriage teachings?
◦ p235: ‘the impact of emotional and verbal abuse … was greater than that of physical or sexual abuse.’ YIKES. It is NEVER appropriate to compare types of abuse. ALL kinds of abuse are bad, full stop. This greater than/less than argument purports to help victims of emotional and verbal abuse feel that their trauma is valid, but what it actually does is reduce abuse to the Trauma Olympics.
***CONCLUSION***
All in all, this book is: dense, hard to read 85% of the time, extremely uneven in tone (the different author chapters) with no attempt made to harmonise the tone for a more even reading experience. The chapters written largely by Dr Stephanie were what most threatened to put me to sleep; her style is very academic and dry. It didn’t explain things like the double-empathy problem (I’m still clueless as to what it is), and overall I felt the slant taken on neurodiversity was that it is more likely to be a problem than a benefit or even something that is neutral. I don’t find that this book does much to tackle autism stigma, and some of it advice and the people it cites are questionable at best. I was left disappointed, I’m afraid.
I’m looking forward to the release of Sophie Killingley’s book Blessed Are The Neurodivergent, which promises a much more positive faith-based take on neurodivergence in marriage and family. I do not think that on balance I would recommend Uniquely Us.
(If you’re looking for my TL;DR, just scroll down to the conclusion.)
◦ Very high academic tone; quite hard to read most of the time. Like reading a paper, except for occasional digressions into personal stories, which were a welcome relief.
◦ Excerpts from podcast interviews included without cleaning up their grammar and punctuation, however, making them hard to parse.
◦ Refers to the ‘controversy’ over Hans Asperger, which is an interesting way to describe him being a nasty little Nazi sympathiser who sent children he deemed ‘imbecilic’ and a burden to their parents to their deaths at Am Spielgrund euthanasia clinic. Have a read of his referral notes for Herta and Elisabeth; he knew exactly what he was doing. No need to be so cautious when referring to him.
◦ Acronyms! NA/NT and AS/ND drove me crazy. How hard is it to just write 'autistic' and 'neurotypical'?! Either that, or pick one – use ‘NT’ and ‘ND’ rather than two other acronyms as well. I kept getting confused as to which was supposed to be which in my head. They didn't increase clarity; they added to confusion and made the book as a whole harder to read.
◦ I found the study interviewing non-autistic sisters of autistic women interesting. I am one of those sisters and found the description 'close, non-primary caregiver' to encapsulate my role entirely. Although, my neurodiverse sister is much younger than me, which contributes to this dynamic.
◦ I will say, though, the chapter on women who are autistic has quite a negative slant to it. It ends on the note that autism is the main factor causing one woman to verbally abuse her husband (I think there might be other factors at play here, autism does not cause abusive behaviours!), and has an excerpt from Stephanie and Dan's ADHD daughter Erica, which seems to scold their other autistic daughter, Erica's sister, for being hurtful with her communication.
Certainly, autistic people can be blunt, and it is not always on the non-autistic family member to just have tougher skin. They do need to learn how to interact with others who will not have the same level of tolerance. However, I'd have liked a chance for their autistic daughter to have a say here as well.
Autistic people are often highly sensitive, love hard, and hate to hurt their loved ones, but they're not usually aware they're doing it. To end the chapter by scolding autistic women specifically, as if they're all equally likely to verbally abuse their loved ones (when no such accusation has been levelled at autistic men), seems unfair and sexist to me.
◦ I roll my eyes at the usual Christian repeating of the entirely invented notion that joy and happiness are different things. The words are synonymous. Any distinction is assigned to the words, not inherent to their dictionary definition.
◦ Like the bit about healthy correction over shame-based. Yes.
◦ Yikes. It took me 5min of Googling to find that David Rowland, cited as 'a controversial name in autism research' is in fact a quack who believes vaccines cause autism. It's right there as a PDF on his scammy-looking website. He also says autistic people do not feel fear (tbf, the authors say they disagree with him here), and that autistic people feel no emotion at all and there is no autistic spectrum, among other things. It's very hard to see why the authors take his brain research at face value if these are the kinds of conclusions he comes to. One star lost for citing this guy at all.
◦ OK, so later on, the authors are basically using 'joy' as a synonym for relational connectedness. Why not just say connectedness then, when that's what you mean?
◦ Noticing a number of minor spelling and grammar errors as I move through the book. As an editor, I am aware of how difficult these can be to catch, but it does not reflect well on Morgan James Publishing that a noticeable number of these were not caught.
◦ Like the emphasis on long-term behaviour change, not quick fixes.
◦ The authors quote uncritically these words from Wilder and Warner: ‘Developments in modern brain science have made it clear that any model of transformation and character change must be anchored in the development of a love bond with God and His people’. So non-Christians are doomed to bad relationships where meaningful change is not possible, then? The idea that only Christians can achieve a good neurodiverse marriage strikes me as discriminatory. Not to mention untrue, given that in the previous chapter, the double ND couple who appeared to have the healthiest relationship of the three was the one where the couple walked away from the church.
◦ I am sorry for what Stephanie went through in her marriage and parenting, and admire her courage to share so freely in this chapter. However, it sounds like, from an outside perspective, what was causing a lot of the issues were (a) toxic patriarchal gender roles within the church that she didn’t feel she measured up to (who does, btw?) and (b) an unsupportive school system refusing to make reasonable adjustments for their daughter. I had the impression that Dan’s undiagnosed autism had caused most of the problems. This does not appear, from Stephanie’s telling, to be accurate.
As with the two unhappy couples in the previous chapter, contrasted with the couple who had moved away from the church and its toxic influence re gender roles, it sounds like religious patriarchy was the major cause of relational strain within the authors’ marriage. It also sounds like moving state and educational system and dismantling patriarchal narratives taught them by the church were a large part of what changed things. I don’t want to undermine the importance of a neurodiversity diagnosis (it’s a good thing to have confirmation), but frankly, it doesn’t sound like it was the main problem.
◦ p94 Sheila Gregoire mentioned! Glad her excellent ministry was of benefit to the authors. (It is worth noting that Sheila and her daughter Rebecca Lindenbach critique toxic marriage teachings through a critical lens on biblical patriarchy, only lending strength to my assessment above.)
◦ ‘However, no-one can make you feel a certain way. If someone corrects the way you are building a fence or driving a car they cannot make you feel like an idiot.’ (p95). Yeahhh, not in my experience. Without explicitly calling someone an idiot, it is entirely possible to undermine their competence at tasks in a way that makes them feel worthless. Constant, unasked-for critique (even if valid) can tear a person down as much as harsh words.
◦ The authors go on to say that if you perceive critique as control, criticism or contempt, then that is your work to undo that mindset. Well. Not if critique *is* being used as a weapon of control or contempt. This way, the gaslighter can say ‘I’m only providing helpful feedback!’ as they continue to pick away at everything their spouse does. If your spouse has a pattern of critiquing everything you do, even if their stated aim is to make you better, you will likely feel henpecked and bullied. Also, I fundamentally disagree with the categorical statement ‘no-one can make you feel a certain way.’ I just straight-up think that is bullshit, and anyone who has ever been belittled, bullied or gaslit would agree.
◦ Although it’s Brene Brown’s point, I do like the inclusion of the distinction between shame and guilt. (Here are two words which actually do have different meanings!) It’s easy to see how this could be a freeing revelation for both neurodiverse and neurotypical spouses. ‘I’m not broken, built wrong, inherently bad, etc., I just have a different neurotype from my spouse.’ This then distinguishes it from feelings of guilt: ‘I leave too much of the mental load on my spouse’s shoulders because it causes meltdowns for me. I need to apologise and we can figure out a way forward together.’
◦ OK, Dan’s story sheds a bit more light on why his neurodiversity may have added to their marriage problems. Curiosity is great, but so is the realisation that your spouse isn’t a subject to be studied.
◦ I want to know more about ‘nearly strangled the dog’ though. That is concerning – although Dan does admit this was a red line to cross, I am interested in why it was crossed to begin with. Nearly killing an animal is way beyond the normal remit of angry behaviour, and frankly I don’t believe that is connected to his autism, just poor emotional management, which tbf he owns up to. He seems insightful and self-knowing, but my gosh, if my husband had nearly killed our dog, I’d probably separate. Animal abuse is a red flag for me.
◦ Again, somewhat exclusionary language used re setting boundaries – ‘developing a secure identity in Christ is essential when setting and maintaining boundaries.’ This sentence doesn’t need much to fix it, just the words ‘for Christians’ after ‘essential’. Also ‘it’s unloving *not* to set boundaries’, could cause some people with weak or no boundaries to feel guilt, which is not the best way of effecting change in someone.
◦ The majority of stuff on boundaries here is good though.
◦ Not loving the way she equates past trauma and neurodiversity ‘Past trauma or neurodiversity is never an excuse for sinful, unloving behaviour’. (p117). Sure, some of the brain patterns including rejection sensitive dysphoria may be the same, but it’s antithetical to celebrating neurodiversity to act like it’s a problem on the level of past trauma. Sure, I agree with the broad point that there’s no excuse for treating others poorly, but putting them in the same breath is, IMO, harmful.
◦ The godly sorrow/worldly sorrow distinction isn’t my favourite either, particularly when talking about Judas. There’s a whole world of thought and theology to get into about Judas (was he predestined to betray Jesus, therefore how much of a choice did he really have, and is it possible for him to be redeemed?) but adjudicating whether his sorrow was sufficient or not is gross, to put it mildly. Peter doesn’t actually repent and receive forgiveness until confronted with the risen Jesus. Peter is sorry, sure, but so is Judas; the major difference is that Peter did not take his life. The worst implication here is that suicide is ‘worldly sorrow’ and therefore not sufficient – to which, big yikes. Perhaps that’s not what she meant, but it does rather sound like it.
◦ Really enjoyed the writing style of Carol’s chapter, even if her outlining of examples of autistic communication from the DSM-5 were a bit stereotyped. Perhaps her experience of her husband is that way, but it doesn’t mean all autistic people communicate like that. EG, most autistic people I know understand the meaning of the nonliteral phrase ‘what’s up?’. Some won’t, of course, but again, what’s true for a subset is not true for all, and I’d have liked to see a bit more nuance. The difference between ‘pry/pound the boards’ did make me chuckle, though. I’ve had many an interaction with my autistic sister along those lines.
◦ That being said, ‘we should really open up the house’ is not something that I, as a neurotypical, would take as a directive either. I’m not a fan of indirect communication, and while I am generally not petty enough to play dumb to get someone to be explicit about their request, it is tempting sometimes. (I’m not saying that is what autistic people do – they usually do not get the subtext, as per Greg; they are not being petty.) As a neurotypical, I often do get the subtext, but not always, and because I find indirectness irritating, I might follow up with, ‘Are you saying you want me to open a window, or are you just talking generally?’
Tl;dr, indirectness is confusing and annoying, even if you’re NT – my plea to fellow NTs is, just don’t do this, esp if your partner is on the spectrum.
◦ Excellent quote from Nason, and hits on exactly what I was getting at in the chapter on autistic women. ND people do not intend to be rude when they are blunt, but they do miss implicit meaning, while NTs often impute bad motives to autistic people’s communication because they read into it malign intent that isn’t there.
◦ Re ‘pedantic speech’ – I disagree. Exactness of speech is a common feature of autism, yes, but personally I wouldn’t impute poetic/descriptive turns of phrase to Greg’s autism. Every poet and writer of yesteryear would be autistic, if this were true.
◦ Example 2 on the hike – I am not surprised that Greg felt hurt and offended by Carol’s comment. I wouldn’t see this as being about scripting or NT to ND communication differences – this read as the NT person needling her ND partner about something he’s not good at, for no particular reason. If someone was telling me about their interest in climbing mountains, and I also knew that they couldn’t swim well, would it be kind if I said, ‘So how come you can’t apply that level of discipline to your swimming?’
◦ While most of the chapter is good, I feel like there is a level of pathologizing everything Greg does because he is autistic, and every aspect of his character being traced back to that. I know how annoyed my autistic sister gets when people assume that every part of her personality and communication style can be traced back to her autism. Autistic people are just that: people. I understand that for the NT partner, it can feel like learning about your spouse’s autism after many years is a kind of ‘cheat code’ to understanding them, but not everything they do and say is evidence of autism. Some of it is just their natural quirks and personality traits, which we all have.
◦ ‘Aspie’ is dated language referring to the aforementioned Nazi sympathiser and is rarely used in the UK for that reason. The repeated references to it got on my nerves.
◦ Robin’s chapter is very good and interesting. I liked her 12 points of executive function strength/challenge list. The couple scenarios from her counselling practice are all very useful and interesting too.
◦ There’s a thread here that emerges from especially the last two stories where, like with Stephanie and Dan, although neurodiversity is part of the picture, perhaps the real enemy of these marriages is patriarchy.
◦ The scenario of the NT wife unloading on the ND husband is not a behaviour that should be normalised. I understand how pressure can build up so that the NT person does that, but that’s actually an unhealthy relational behaviour which merits an apology from the NT. I actually think it is not on the ND person to analyse the contents of their partner’s outburst, but on the NT person to communicate properly and kindly.
Again, I am not married, but swap this into any other close relationship: would it be acceptable for a parent, friend or sibling to yell at you about all your faults and for them to not only *not* apologise and have a repair conversation, but expect you to sort through the contents of their outburst for actionable points of change? Tl;dr, be direct and kind, don’t store up resentments.
◦ I don’t really get the sarcasm example. Is he saying he had to give up an aspect of his sense of humour just because his wife found it annoying? That seems like a bridge too far for me.
◦ Jeremy and Charity’s chapter together is mostly good, bar the voice jumps! Half the time I don’t know whether it’s Charity or Jeremy and have to figure out from context. A bit more of an edit would have cleared this up. They come across as a lovely couple though; I love the focus on family joy, on empathy and kindness, asking the ‘why’ behind behaviours, etc.
◦ The ‘actually’ word banning trick is such a great example of helping autistic children communicate better with other people without stigmatising or shaming. Love this.
◦ Love that there is a chapter on the additional challenge of autism diagnosis for non-white families.
◦ Mary’s story seems to have many commonalities with Stephanie’s, and her description of Cassandra syndrome was really impactful. Like Stephanie, though, she mentions the impact of church teachings that she should just have more sex, be submissive etc to fix the marriage. How might we untwist the seams of what is a marriage challenge strictly caused by undiagnosed neurodiversity and what is caused by patriarchal marriage teachings?
◦ p235: ‘the impact of emotional and verbal abuse … was greater than that of physical or sexual abuse.’ YIKES. It is NEVER appropriate to compare types of abuse. ALL kinds of abuse are bad, full stop. This greater than/less than argument purports to help victims of emotional and verbal abuse feel that their trauma is valid, but what it actually does is reduce abuse to the Trauma Olympics.
***CONCLUSION***
All in all, this book is: dense, hard to read 85% of the time, extremely uneven in tone (the different author chapters) with no attempt made to harmonise the tone for a more even reading experience. The chapters written largely by Dr Stephanie were what most threatened to put me to sleep; her style is very academic and dry. It didn’t explain things like the double-empathy problem (I’m still clueless as to what it is), and overall I felt the slant taken on neurodiversity was that it is more likely to be a problem than a benefit or even something that is neutral. I don’t find that this book does much to tackle autism stigma, and some of it advice and the people it cites are questionable at best. I was left disappointed, I’m afraid.
I’m looking forward to the release of Sophie Killingley’s book Blessed Are The Neurodivergent, which promises a much more positive faith-based take on neurodivergence in marriage and family. I do not think that on balance I would recommend Uniquely Us.
December 15, 2025
Really great resource for any Neurodiverse couple, marriage counselor, trauma counselor, chaplain, social worker or pastor to read. Truly eye-opening, and led to more than I could ask or imagine! Fantastic lived experience, PLUS perspectives from both NT and ND partners as well as clinical expertise.
All the abbreviations could be challenging for someone not familiar with them, but one helpful thing could be to jot down the “key” she provided while you are reading it, until they become second nature.
All the abbreviations could be challenging for someone not familiar with them, but one helpful thing could be to jot down the “key” she provided while you are reading it, until they become second nature.
August 14, 2026
Dr. Stephanie Holmes and her husband Dan have been leading the way in the field of neurodiversity in marriage and family for years!
This book is “must-have” resource for all who provide counseling, coaching, or guidance to spouses and couples even if neurodiversity such as autism or ADHD has never been formally diagnosed. Clinicians and clergy have little to no education and training in understanding and recognizing neurodiversity and how marriages are impacted by partners’ differences from one another.
Differences in spoken and non-verbal language, how sensation is experienced and processed, how problems are solved, and the purpose of rules and routines are but a few of the relationship challenges that can be misinterpreted by clinicians and clergy. I have worked with countless partners and couples who have been unintentionally harmed by the guidance of providers who had no knowledge of neurodiversity.
This book provides paramount insight into the world of a neurodiverse couple!
This book is “must-have” resource for all who provide counseling, coaching, or guidance to spouses and couples even if neurodiversity such as autism or ADHD has never been formally diagnosed. Clinicians and clergy have little to no education and training in understanding and recognizing neurodiversity and how marriages are impacted by partners’ differences from one another.
Differences in spoken and non-verbal language, how sensation is experienced and processed, how problems are solved, and the purpose of rules and routines are but a few of the relationship challenges that can be misinterpreted by clinicians and clergy. I have worked with countless partners and couples who have been unintentionally harmed by the guidance of providers who had no knowledge of neurodiversity.
This book provides paramount insight into the world of a neurodiverse couple!
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