Sarcasm and literalness: Communicating in neurodiverse relationships
"The green bin goes out tonight," said my wife as I walked out of the kitchen. Statements like this are commonplace, and make complete sense to neurotypical people around the world (or so I'm told).
My brain, however, wonders why she's telling me something I already know. "Thanks for telling me," feels like the natural reaction to this statement. To Francine, my lovely wife, I'm being sarcastic. Thanking her for telling me is the opposite – it's me trying really, really hard not to be sarcastic.
In my head I'm thinking "I've been living in the same house as you for more than two decades and I drove past all our neighbours' green bins 20 minutes ago. No shit". What my wife is really asking is will I put the bin out so it gets emptied tomorrow, what I'm hearing is information I already have. Welcome to the world of literal communication.
Lost in translation (and space)
For me, it's like the story of the $125m NASA Mars Climate Orbiter that was lost in space in 1999 - two organisations thinking they're talking the same language but not. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory used metres and millimetres for measurements while Lockheed Martin Astronautics, which designed and built the spacecraft used inches and feet. Both organisations were using numbers, they just meant something different to each, and so a spacecraft was lost.
My wife and I use the same words, but what they mean to us can be wildly different, which can cause frustration on both sides. For most of my life when I've done this, people think I'm being sarcastic. And it became easier to be known as the sarcastic one, mostly because I didn't really understand what the issue was.
Just like many of the topics I've written about here, it's all very confusing. I've read articles from people talking about literal communication, mind-blindness and cognitive empathy and my brain gets a little tired. All of this is simply to say that a neurodivergent person might find it harder to understand the intentions behind your words if you're neurotypical.
Can I ask you a question?
Many of the articles (both science based and regular writers) default to explaining this with phrases like "I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse" and "it's raining cats and dogs out there". I don't remember the last time someone said those words to me.
What I can remember are the (many, many) times when someone has uttered the words "Can I ask you a question?" to me. My default response is a logical one to me - "err, you've just asked me a question". People laugh and think I'm trying to be funny.
When this happens, I'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic, I'm turning into a human version of the Spinning Wait Cursor on the Mac. In plain English, that's the colourful ball that appears on my computer when an app receives more events than it can process. My brain can't process why you're using a question to ask if you can ask a question. It's an infinite loop to me that sends my brain into meltdown.
Turn code into action
Sitting down with my wife to explain if she wants action from me that she needs to think about how to word what she says better has made an impact.
Instead of "the green bin goes out tonight" she now says "can you put the green bin out at the kerb right now?". It may seem like a small thing, but it's hugely helpful.
Whilst it's a good time to remind everyone that one of the well-worn tropes around neurodiversity – that none of us can understand or deliver sarcasm – simply isn't true, it's worth thinking about how you speak to the neurodivergent person (or persons) in your life.
A slight tweak in language could make all the difference so that we're all on the same page.