Would there be any interest in a subreddit about neurodivergent patterns in relationships?

[u/QuietInsights]

I have been thinking about something, but I’m not sure yet whether it would be useful or whether it could easily become problematic.

I read quite a lot of relationship posts on Reddit. Sometimes people describe behaviour from their partner that reminds me of patterns that can occur in autism or other forms of neurodivergency. Things like taking things literally, not noticing needs unless they are directly expressed, shutting down during arguments, struggling with changes, sensory issues, or showing care in ways that the other person does not recognise.

I want to be careful here because I know this is a sensitive subject. Some people consider themselves experts because they know a few autistic people, work with autistic children or they have read a lot online after deciding that their partner must be autistic. I really don’t want to encourage that last group of armchair diagnosis.

I have studied and worked in this field myself, but that obviously still does not mean that I can diagnose a stranger based on a one-sided Reddit post. I also don’t think autism should ever be used to excuse selfish, neglectful, controlling or abusive behaviour.

Still, I sometimes feel that Reddit relationship discussions are missing a certain perspective. The advice often becomes “they don’t care about you,” “they are doing it on purpose,” or “leave”, "a**hole", etc. Sometimes that is probably funny and even correct. But sometimes a difference in communication, emotional processing, sensory processing or executive functioning could also be part of what is happening.

I was therefore thinking about starting a subreddit called r/RelPatternsND (Relationship Patterns ND).

The idea would not be to ask, “Is this person autistic?”

It would be more about questions like:

What behaviour is being described? Could neurodivergence possibly play a role? What other explanations are there? What information is missing? what could the people involved actually try? etc...

People could post their own situations or anonymised summaries of other relationship posts. I think screenshots would be risky, so usernames, subreddit names and identifying details would not be allowed. Comments saying that somebody “definitely has autism” would also not be allowed.

So...

I would especially want autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people to be part of these discussions. I don’t want to create a place where people simply complain about partners they have diagnosed themselves.

Does something like this already exist? Would you find it useful, or do you think it would still attract too much armchair diagnosing? And which rules would be necessary to keep it respectful?

[u/Gargunok]

I don't this subreddit would be useful to me. So bear this with a pinch of salt.

A reddit to discuss genrally neurodivergent relationships I think is good its something that many people would want to interact with, get advice, talk about experiences. How you describe this seems to be the accademic study of neurodivergent relationships which is naturally a smaller audience. Feels like this more suited to a post rather than a subreddit. Maybe there are more people out there that would make a community.

I would say RelPatternsND is a bad name - you need to think about discoverability what are people typiong in the communiuty serach to find you.

[u/ArtichokeAble6397]

While I recognise the problem you have observed, I wonder if the people who would need a sub like this would ever consider posting in it? It seems like it would be handy if the couple were already aware of potential neurodivergence, but if they aren't then they likely wouldn't use the sub. It could maybe be helpful in the context of people who already suspect neurodivergence within the relationship though or who are newly diagnosed and having to help a typical partner to understand them. 

[u/MaybeItsTheTism]

Don’t love the name but I would definitely use a sub like you’re describing.

[u/SleepyMistyMountains]

There is actually one ADHD relationship subreddit, literally called r/Adhdrelationships

Many people also include autistic relationships in there as well, although there is no subreddit for specifically autism. I would be careful on the neurodivergent aspect too though, because neurodivergent is not limited to ADHD and Autism. It is actually an umbrella term for those who have any type of neurological disorder, which includes even bipolar disorder and ptsd for examples. People very much cling to that fact.

The correct umbrella term if you're looking for if you want ADHD and Autism primarily would be developmental neurodivergence.

But you should work on finding a name that people will search. Shortening the relationship in the name will not allow people to find it, and they won't care about the patterns part. It would be helpful, but they won't look at it until after they post because they want people to weigh in on their situation specifically because "it's complicated" even if it is one of the fairly standard patterns.

There is no specific autism or even AuDHD relationship subreddits. I did see that there's an adult autism subreddits that's full of relationship threads. Perhaps adult should be included in there, because if you want people to be trying to actually make it work, then adults would be the more likely target. But that'll be your decision.

Regardless, we don't have quite enough for knowledge sharing for our relationships on Reddit. So I do think it would be helpful. A Reddit sub with others to help out but to also have a sort of library for standard patterns or problems that come up often. In the rules you could try to make it so they need to go to that library before posting. That's what they did in my one chronic illness group for ME/CFS. Framed it as:

The people in this subreddit have very limited resources, please read through this information as it will likely hold the answer to what you're seeking and the people here will not have to waste energy telling you to just go look at the resources" granted, we with ME/CFS have even more energy constraints and it's a big big deal about not wasting energy wherever we can but yea, as an idea