Disconnected: Love On The Spectrum with Eleanor Vincent

From the outside, Eleanor Vincent's childhood appeared idyllic. But behind the veneer of a loving, supportive environment was a darker secret: her mother was depressed, Eleanor was abused, and both her parents were same-sex gays and bitterly unhappy. "Our job--my siblings' and mine -- was to protect our parents and not let their secret out." During a year when her father lived in New York to pursue acting, her mother had a female lover. The tension was palpable.

One can only imagine how all of the stress, confusion, and anger molded Eleanor and impacted her choices in life, including her choice of men.

She met her first husband when she worked as a cocktail waitress to augment her salary from a Montessori teaching job. The marriage lasted just four years. They had one child, a girl. At age thirty-two, Eleanor married again. By her mid-30s, she was a single mom with two children to raise.

Eleanor was single for the next thirty-five years until she met and married for a third time at age seventy-one.

If only her story ended there in a happy, supportive marriage. But Eleanor had unwittingly fallen in love with a man who had Asperger's, a developmental disability (some disagree with that categorization), or a person with different brain wiring from neurotypical brains. Didn't she see worrisome signs when they were dating? Yes. But she chose to minimize or overlook them because there was so much good in the relationship. (Some warning signs included no eye contact, inability to talk about emotions, and social awkwardness.)

"I had no idea what that would look like in a day-to-day relationship with a partner," Eleanor said. "It was upsetting, confusing," she said. "He love-bombed me and fooled me into thinking that being in a relationship with me was something he wanted more than anything."

Eleanor tells the rest of the story in her new book, Disconnected: Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage. She talks to me in this fascinating episode about what can happen when two people come together but don't realize that their brains are wired differently and that the ensuing struggle may doom the marriage, no matter how either partner tries.

There are, however, steps couples can take to try to heal and remain partnered. Eleanor outlines those on her website and in her new book. There is hope, but it's a tough road ahead. For Eleanor, the road ended in divorce.

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