Saturday, November 14, 2026.
What a late autism diagnosis can change about the memories a couple shares.
Let’s imagine a man remembering the first time he took his wife to his sister’s for Christmas.
She sat at the kitchen table until midnight, talking with his mother.
On the way home, she put her head against the window and slept.
He remembers thinking she’d felt at home.
Years later, after an autism diagnosis, she tells him what she remembers.
She’d spent the last hour trying to work out how to leave the table without making his mother think she disliked her.
“Were you having a terrible time?” he asks.
“I liked your mother,” she says. “I wanted her to like me.”
He remembers how well the evening went. She remembers how much she did to make it go well.
What masking can cost
In a post on r/AutismInWomen, a woman diagnosed at 53 described letting herself move more freely and no longer forcing eye contact.
During an argument, her husband threw the fact that she’d been masking back at her when she accused him of lying. The Christmas scene is fictional.
The question the post raises belongs to plenty of conversations outside Reddit.
What does someone think they’ve learned about you when they discover how much you were doing to get through an evening?
In a qualitative study of 92 autistic adults, Laura Hull and colleagues examined camouflaging, a broader term that includes concealing autistic traits and developing ways to manage social situations.
Participants described wanting to fit in and to connect with others.
They also described costs, including exhaustion and uncertainty about how they understood themselves.
Wanting to be with people and finding the work of being with them exhausting could be part of the same account ( Hull et al., 2017).
Sarah Bargiela and colleagues interviewed 14 autistic women, ages 22 to 30, who had been diagnosed at 15 or later.
Participants described learning social behavior through close observation and imitation.
Their accounts help explain how effort can become hard for other people to see.
They offer a much narrower window onto diagnosis at 53. Neither study followed married couples as they revisited their histories.
What follows is a question for the therapy room (Bargiela et al., 2016).
What each of you remembers
If this couple brought Christmas to therapy, I’d ask him what told him she felt at home.
Maybe it was how long she stayed at the table.
Maybe his mother had called the next morning to say how much she liked her.
He has reasons for remembering the evening warmly. I’d ask her what staying at the table required.
When did she first want a break? What did she imagine would happen if she took one?
Perhaps she had said, “I can help clear up,” hoping he would follow her into the kitchen, where she could tell him she was ready to go.
He remembers thinking how kind it was that she offered to do the dishes. It may be the first time either of them has had reason to ask what that particular offer meant.
Calling it lying would make the whole evening a question of intent before he’d heard what her intent was.
Once he hears about the dishes, he has a question of his own.
“You always said you loved Christmas there. What did you love about it?”
“Your mother used to tell me stories about you when you were little. The one about you hiding under the porch because you thought your haircut was that bad. I wanted to hear all of them.” She thinks for a moment. “I also wanted to go home before midnight.”
He remembers his mother telling that story. His wife was the one who asked how long he’d stayed under there. He’d forgotten that part.
If she wants to leave earlier now, they can work out how to get home.
If there’s a kind of touch she no longer wants, she gets to decline it without proving what every previous yes meant. Her answer still counts tonight.
Related reading
Next Christmas
I’d ask them to work out one thing before the next gathering.
What can she say when she needs a break, and what will he do when he hears it?
Perhaps she wants him to come with her. Perhaps she’d like twenty minutes alone and would prefer he stay with his sister.
He can ask. She can change her mind once they get there.
At the next Christmas dinner, his mother is passing the pie when his wife says she’s going outside.
“Want company?” he asks.
“Give me ten minutes. Save me a piece.”
He cuts her a piece and sets it at her place. By the time she comes back, someone else is doing the dishes.
If a late diagnosis is changing how you and your partner understand your years together, explore my couples therapy services or contact me for a free introductory call.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Bargiela, S., Steward, R., & Mandy, W. (2016). The experiences of late-diagnosed women with autism spectrum conditions: An investigation of the female autism phenotype. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(10), 3281–3294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-016-2872-8
Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M.-C., & Mandy, W. (2017). “Putting on my best normal”: Social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47(8), 2519–2534. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3166-5