Love isn’t one-size-fits-all. And intimacy—despite what popular culture would have us believe—isn’t a universal language.

For neurodiverse couples, closeness often takes a different shape, one that doesn’t always look like eye contact, shared emotional vocabulary, or synchronized responses.

But it can still be deep. And real. And fiercely honest.

Terry Real’s concept of fierce intimacy—telling the truth while staying in connection—takes on added dimensions in relationships where one or both partners are neurodivergent.

It’s not just about finding the courage to speak. It’s about learning how your partner listens. And how you both come back to each other after the signal gets scrambled.

What Is Fierce Intimacy—When You're Neurodiverse?

Not all intimacy is fierce. Much of it is mild-mannered, polite, and conflict-averse.

We say the right things. We avoid the wrong topics. We walk on eggshells, convinced we’re preserving peace—when really, we’re just preserving distance.

Terry Real, couples therapist and author, offers a different path.

He calls it fierce intimacy—a form of connection built not on constant agreement or careful tiptoeing, but on truthfulness and accountability within the relationship (Real, 2022).

It’s not loud. It’s not aggressive. But it is brave.

Fierce intimacy is the art of telling the truth without abandoning the relationship.

And for many couples, it’s the very thing that allows love to deepen—not disappear.

What Makes Intimacy Fierce?

Coined by therapist and author Terry Real, the “normal marital hatred” phase describes a moment—often early in long-term commitment—when one or both partners look at each other with cold clarity and think:

“I can’t stand you. What have I done?”

It’s not poetic. It’s not filtered through a couples therapist’s Instagram page. But it’s deeply honest—and completely normal. Most long-term relationships go through this phase. In fact, some go through it multiple times.

This isn’t hatred in the clinical or abusive sense. It’s the rupture that occurs when:

• Projection collapses (you stop seeing them as your fantasy)

• Reality kicks in (they’re flawed and not changing)

• And your nervous system, wired for protection, registers this mismatch as a threat

Especially in neurodiverse couples—where partners may have profoundly different ways of thinking, feeling, or expressing love—this disillusionment can feel even more jarring.

Why Does It Happen?

It started with a Coldplay concert.

That’s not a sentence most people expect to signal the unraveling of a relationship, let alone a small cultural tremor. But when the grainy footage hit social media—an executive-looking man nuzzling a woman who wasn’t his wife during a Coldplay ballad—what followed wasn’t just tabloid fodder.

It was meme acceleration. And beneath the schadenfreude and digital pile-on, something more human and more disquieting began to show.

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t just about a man cheating.

It was about being caught in the most melodramatic and 2025 way possible—on the emotional jumbotron of Coldplay, with the entire internet playing forensic marriage detective within minutes.

A CEO and his Chief People Officer were caught on the Coldplay kiss-cam, which is either ironic or poetic depending on how you feel about HR guidelines and "Viva La Vida."

We don’t know their full story — maybe they're in love, maybe it's new, maybe it's an affair, or maybe they're just very, very bad at hiding things in public.

But it’s sparked a national cringe — and conversation — about what happens when emotional intimacy, sexual chemistry, and professional ambition all show up wearing lanyards.

And let’s be honest: it happens more than anyone wants to admit. A lot more.

It began as a night of music, lights, and Chris Martin earnestly trying to stitch the world together with falsetto.

But somewhere between "Yellow" and "The Scientist," two concertgoers found themselves stitched into a very different story: a moment of intimacy caught on the Coldplay Kiss Cam, a flash of panic, and then—thanks to the internet—a viral reckoning.

They were not just two random fans.

As the internet quickly deduced, this was Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s head of HR.

Married, father of two. By morning, the phrase "Coldplay affair" had taken on a life of its own.

Let us resist the urge to gawk.

Let us, instead, consider what this moment tells us about narcissism, hubris, and the oddly clarifying power of public intimacy.

Let’s say the quiet part out loud.

Couples therapy is a strange ritual. You schedule your suffering in 50-minute blocks. You pay someone to ask hard questions.

You rehearse vulnerability, sometimes in the presence of someone who isn’t even making eye contact. And then you go home and argue about what was said—or what wasn’t.

It’s brave. It’s hopeful. But it’s also, at times, bewildering.

So when it doesn’t feel like it’s working—or worse, when it starts to feel like a weekly exercise in despair—you begin to wonder: Is this still worth it?

Let’s explore when it’s actually wise to quit couples therapy, and when the discomfort you’re feeling is exactly the thing you should be leaning into.

Couples therapy has a PR problem.

On Instagram, it’s all throw pillows, card decks, and holding hands on matching yoga mats. On Reddit, it’s stories of miraculous turnarounds:
“We went to three sessions, and he finally got it.”

Or: “She stopped bringing up 2017 after our therapist said I wasn't the villain.”

But let’s be honest. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s 50 minutes of paid bickering, trauma-informed homework that nobody did, or one partner weaponizing every insight for rhetorical sport.

So: why does couples therapy fail?

Here’s the answer no marketing agency wants to give you:
because it’s not therapy that’s broken — it’s what we bring to it.

And often, what we bring has been shaped not just by childhood or trauma — but also, in part, by the particular psychodynamics of American culture.

You ask a question. They grunt. You share your day. They stare at their phone. You suggest therapy. They go silent.

Welcome to the emotional shutdown — a quiet, soul-chilling phenomenon where the person you love becomes a human screensaver.

And if you’re the talker, the feeler, the one who wants to work on things, this silence can feel like abandonment in real-time.

Emotional withdrawal doesn’t always mean your partner doesn’t care.

It often means they’re overwhelmed, under-resourced, or wired differently.

And yes, sometimes, they're just being stubborn. The hard part is figuring out which.

Let’s explore why this happens and what to do that doesn’t make it worse.

Once upon a time, a dog was a dog.

You picked a retriever, a shepherd, or the mutt your cousin was rehoming. These dogs barked, chased tennis balls, and shed like shame.

But then came the Oodles—hybrids with names that sound like pasta dishes or sneeze noises. The Bolonoodle. The Chipoo. The Twoodle.

You’d be forgiven for wondering if these names came from a Dr. Seuss cookbook.

But beneath the whimsy lies something more profound: a seismic shift in how modern families define kinship.

Oodles are not just dogs. They are curated, intentional additions to the social fabric of the household.

You’re at a bustling restaurant, trying to catch what your granddaughter just said.

It’s like parsing Morse code through a wind tunnel—her voice is there, but it’s competing with clinking silverware, background jazz, and someone asking loudly for the salt.

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone.

One of the most frustrating hallmarks of aging is the growing inability to distinguish speech from noise. It’s not just a matter of hearing—it's about the brain's capacity to focus, filter, and decode.

And a new study out of Toronto and Beijing may have uncovered a lifelong habit that helps: playing music.

For most people, a gentle hug or a friendly pat on the back is comforting. It's a form of wordless communication—something we instinctively recognize as social, meaningful, and safe.

But for some individuals on the autism spectrum, especially those with sensory sensitivities, touch can feel overwhelming or even invasive.

Why is that?

New research published in Nature Communications (Chari et al., 2024) offers a compelling, brain-based explanation. In a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome—a leading genetic cause of autism—scientists found that the animals' neurons simply didn’t distinguish between social and non-social touch.

For these mice, a plastic object and another mouse brushing against them triggered the same reaction: aversion.

This neural confusion may explain why many autistic individuals find all touch—regardless of intent—unpleasant.