Before I found out I was ND I thought I had good or even excellent communication skills:

• I could think logically a present a coherent argument
• I could speak and write clearly (you may disagree, these are my opinions!)
• experience showed I could explain complex ideas to people

After I was married of course there were sometimes communication problems between me and my wife, but everybody has those and this was no different. Or so I thought: these are not at all the same.

Communication Grade 2.0

It turns out I might have a few difficulties that I didn’t really notice.

Communication at work (software job) was largely literal and logical. Truth and Facts were the primary form of communication. I fit in well with this – it is my native language and NT people had to adjust themselves to be clear.

At home, with my wife, Emotions were more likely part of the discussion. I think differently (no Social Salience, no Theory of Mind) and Say The Wrong Thing. I even have different meanings for emotion words and didn’t know it. I had no Empathy and Flat Affect – emotional conversations were … not great.

Additionally, NT people experience Double Empathy with me, though I don’t experience it with them. In fact I completely miss this nonverbal part – signal blind.

What works great in the office doesn’t always work the same way in the home. Now that I understand more about what is going on with NT emotional signaling I can see there is a big gap in some conversations. From what I read, these high emotion conversations aren’t easy for NT people and I am flying blind.