Different Isn't Wrong: Marriage When You Both Have Different Brains

** Sign up to the Beautifully Wired Summit for Free** She married young, with an anxiety diagnosis, and assumed the wedding would fix it. It did not. Jackie is back, which makes her my very first repeat guest, and this conversation went exactly where you would expect two ADHD brains to go, which is everywhere. We didn't prepare questions. We just hit record. She talks first about showing up authentically online versus in real life, and why the internet has always felt safer than a room with two people in it. Then we get into marriage, and this is the bit I keep thinking about. Jackie married two weeks out of college with what she was told was anxiety and what turned out to be undiagnosed ADHD and a stack of sensory differences she wouldn't understand until she was 31. Her husband's brain works nothing like hers. For years, that difference felt like a choice he was making, and when something feels like a choice, it feels like an attack, and then you're both defensive and nobody is actually talking. What changed was understanding that every brain is just trying to feel safe, and different brains find safety in different places. She is also clear about the line, which I appreciated. Neurodivergence isn't an excuse for bad behaviour. You do not get to say I can't. But you absolutely get to say I do it differently. We talk about the "manual car" idea, which is possibly the kindest reframe I've heard for the fantasy that a partner should just know. We talk about touch, and the moment Jackie realised it wasn't her husband she was recoiling from, it was a specific type of touch. And we talk about the middle chunk of life, the survival years, where the laughter quietly disappears and you look up one day and realise you're partner roommates. GUEST LINKS:  Check out Jackie on Insta Find her book here GET THE LINKS The Unfinished Idea Website Join the Unfinished Community  Exhasuted to Empowered Follow me on socials:  INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices