In a marriage where one partner is neurodivergent—autistic, ADHD, or otherwise neurologically wired with nonstandard issue firmware—things don’t just get complicated.

They get misinterpreted. Sometimes pathologized. Often, ignored. Especially by couples therapists trained exclusively on the neurotypical (NT) template.

Let’s start with a real-world example.

A colleague once told me a story about when he was participating in a high-level training for couples therapists recently.

A case was presented involving a husband described as self-absorbed, emotionally flat, rigid in routine, and indifferent to his wife’s emotional needs. The therapist confidently diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder.

To anyone in the room trained in standard diagnostic frameworks, this probably seemed apt.

But to those of us familiar with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs), it was a red flag of a different color.

In one of the most resonant cultural fusions of therapy-speak and meme culture, a single sentence has begun to circulate like wildfire:

“Healing the inner child while raising one.”

It’s shared on Instagram carousels with warm pastels, stitched into TikToks showing exhausted parents tearing up during tantrums, and turned into tearjerking Substack confessionals.

This meme is doing something rare: speaking simultaneously to our personal pain and our collective desire for progress.

It also points to something deeper: a quiet revolution in how we understand family, identity, and emotional inheritance.

In a discovery straight out of speculative fiction, neuroscientists have confirmed that the human brain emits light—yes, actual photons—that pass through the skull and shift depending on what you’re doing or thinking.

This new study, published in iScience, reveals that the brain produces ultraweak light signals that not only exist, but may correlate with mental states like rest, alertness, and sensory processing.

It’s called ultraweak photon emission (UPE), and while it doesn’t exactly make your head glow like a lightbulb, it could launch an entirely new era of non-invasive brain imaging—a technique the researchers cheekily call photoencephalography.

What Is Ultraweak Photon Emission—and Why Is Your Brain Doing It?

It starts with a baby. That’s the part we expect.

What no one prepares you for is the moment, two weeks in, when your body still hurts, your mind begins to drift into strange territory, and everyone around you wants to hold the baby—but not your fear.

No one warns you that after giving life, you might feel like your own is falling apart quietly in the background.

They call it “the baby blues.”
You suspect it’s something deeper.

But it’s hard to know for sure—because no one’s saying it out loud.

You didn’t Google “my husband hates me” for fun.

You're here because something in your marriage feels off—maybe devastatingly off.

Maybe he rolls his eyes when you speak. Maybe he sleeps on the edge of the bed like you're radioactive.

Maybe he hasn’t said “I love you” since your last anniversary dinner, which you planned, paid for, and cried in the bathroom halfway through.

If you're here, it's because you're wondering something painful and unspeakable: Does he even like me anymore?

As a couples therapist, let me say this first: You are not crazy. And you're not alone. That phrase—"my husband hates me"—shows up more often in therapy than most people realize.

It's a placeholder for exhaustion, distance, resentment, rejection, and disconnection. And behind it, there’s often a deeper story waiting to be uncovered.

This blog post is for anyone who’s whispered that phrase into a pillow, typed it into a search bar, or heard it echo in their own mind.

Let’s talk about what it really means—and what you can do about it.

If the Coolidge Effect explains why the average neurotypical brain gets bored with sexual familiarity, imagine what happens when the brain isn’t average.

Imagine it’s wired for intensity, pattern detection, hyperfocus—or has trouble with impulse control, reward delay, or sensory overload.

Welcome to the quiet war between neurodivergence and long-term desire, where dopamine isn’t just a pleasure chemical—it’s a survival mechanism, and sexual novelty can feel less like temptation and more like neurological stabilization.

Gentle reader, this post explores how the Coolidge Effect might collide with ADHD, autism, and other forms of neurodivergence.

If you’ve ever wondered why people in long-term relationships sometimes feel like they’re watching the same movie on repeat—even when they love the plot and the co-star—it might help to blame an old presidential anecdote and a pile of horny lab rats.

Welcome to the Coolidge Effect: a not-so-fun biological feature that makes sexual novelty exciting… and sexual familiarity, well, less so.

This post is going to walk you through the science, the controversy, the cultural baggage, and the implications of the Coolidge Effect for real couples in real bedrooms—not just rats in cages.

And because we’re grown-ups, we’ll do this with the usual cocktail of dry humor, APA-style citations, and compassionate skepticism for the stories we tell ourselves about desire.

What Is the Coolidge Effect?

What Is Intensive Parenting Burnout?

You love your kids. You read the books, pack the snacks, schedule the piano lessons, regulate your tone, monitor screen time, and teach them about emotional intelligence in the checkout line.

And you're exhausted — not just in your body, but in your soul.

That’s intensive parenting burnout: a slow, corrosive depletion caused not by apathy or neglect, but by cultural over-functioning. It thrives in high-achieving families, hides behind smiling family photos, and sounds like:

"I’m doing everything right.
Why does it still feel like I’m failing?"

In the great American tradition of solving systemic oppression by blaming individuals, we built a myth: the Superwoman Schema.

Think: Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, your grandmother, your mother, you.

Coined by psychologist Cheryl Woods-Giscombe (2010), the Superwoman Schema describes the internalized belief that a Black woman must be strong, self-sacrificing, and emotionally contained at all times.

Not because she wants to be. Because she has to be.

The thinking goes: If I’m not strong, who will protect my children? Who will advocate for my family in racist institutions? Who will hold this fragile lineage of dignity together with two hands and no rest?

And so, emotional suppression becomes a ritual. Vulnerability becomes indulgence. Softness becomes dangerous.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to glimpse a priest’s biceps, you had to wait for the parish picnic and pray for volleyball weather.

These days? Just open TikTok.

Welcome to the Vatican’s latest strategy to resurrect faith in the age of the scroll: attractive clergy with influencer-level charisma.

The message? Come for the abs… Stay for the absolution.

Let’s talk about something uncomfortable: how a daughter’s perceived attractiveness and a father’s income and educationlevel can shape the intensity, tone, and texture of their relationship.

If you’re already clutching your pearls or polishing your Freud jokes, you’re not alone.

But a new study in Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology (Garza et al., 2024) wants you to take a breath—and take a look.

This research leans on two frameworks that don’t always get invited to the same party: life history theory and the daughter-guarding hypothesis.

Together, they offer a surprisingly cohesive picture of how modern dads—shaped by economics, education, and old instincts—relate to their daughters in emotional, protective, and even controlling ways.

Let’s say you’re a woman. You’re scanning dating profiles.

One catches your eye: good jawline, reads books, doesn’t look too likely he’s going to quote Joe Rogan over brunch.

Better yet, he’s looking for something serious.

In theory, this kind of profile should bring out your best self—spark your originality, ignite your creativity. You want to stand out, right?

But according to a recent study published in Evolutionary Psychology, the opposite may happen. If you find yourself too sexually aroused by this long-term-oriented dreamboat, your creative engine might not rev up—it might stall completely.