What we forget is in the closet
Neurodivergent love that doesn't have to perform
Sgt. Sushi is a small lanky kitten, only one-year-old, but has had the emotional intelligence of an aged grief counselor since day one. He’s the therapy cat we didn’t know we needed. Yas lost both of his beloved cats within a year of when we first met, and he was already masking a depression I didn’t quite know how to hold.
I got Sushi for Yas in January 2025, right before we decided to move in together. Within hours, this tiny gray-black-and-white fur baby imprinted on Yas, dubbed him “his person,” and that stinker hasn’t left his side since. They truly are inseparable. Sushi curls up on Yas’s lap while he works, follows him from room to room, meows at him when he’s decided Yas needs to wake up. Sushi’s favorite spot is on Yas’ shoulder, paws hanging over like the baby he is, and Yas just needs to carry him from room to room...just...like...that.
It’s the kind of devotion that doesn’t need to be explained or proven; it’s just powerful.
Watching them together each day, I realized I can learn a lot from that tiny kitten. I’m learning that love doesn’t have to perform to be real.
Yas is AuDHD (that’s Autistic/ADHD for those in the back), which means he is very literal, black and white, and very systems-oriented. His heart beats for optimization, for smarter-not-harder, for efficiencies. He’s an SEO guy who thinks in algorithms and patterns. At times, he fixates, he gets triggered by loud noises, he loops, and can’t snap out of it.
I was recently diagnosed ADHD with a little sidecar of anxiety, which for me means yes, I’m high-functioning on the outside but scattered on the inside. I’m notorious for starting projects I never finish, getting paralyzed and stuck in the list-making part, never making it past the pen on the paper. I’ve described my thoughts as loose train cars with no connection…there is no train of thought, they’re just thoughts that crash into each other from time to time, yelling at me when I’m stressed. I’m intuitive, observant, a visual processor, and a little emotionally manic when I get triggered. I think out loud, I need to explain things four different ways to make sure my point is made, and I need external structure and validation because my internal world is chaos.
Together, we’re a study in contrasts and overlaps. I love systems and routines, while he loves the idea of systems and routines. He leaves cabinet doors open and a trail of whatever he’s been into, but I leave ADHD piles of randomness everywhere. When he cleans, he hyperfocuses and will scrub a pan until it’s back to new, meanwhile, I literally hate cleaning but really love for things to have a place. He likes to clean, I like to organize, and neither of us actually maintains either. We both only see what’s in front of our faces…out of sight equals out of mind, object permanence? I don’t know her. Yet in all the chaos, we can still both recall the exact random pile that one specific piece of paper is in when we need it.
Our apartment is controlled chaos. ADHD piles, half-finished projects, Sgt. Peppers (our other raccoon-sized king cat from Blythewood, SC) knocking things off counters, Sushi trailing behind Yas like a tiny shadow. It’s messy, and it’s ours.
For the first time in my life, I’m not performing to prove I’m worthy of love.
The kitchen is my domain, and he’s happy to relinquish. Yas doesn’t really cook…he’s made me steak exactly once, and I made the sides, and it was beautiful and rare and special because of that.
But he loves everything I make…even the ridiculous stuff. Like the one time I took one of his leftover triple cheeseburgers, cut the cheese/patty/cheese combo into strips, fried it up like bacon, and made toast with “burger bacon” and a fried egg. He’s told people about it for months after…he was blown away.
He loves everything I make for him equally. He’s so grateful, so appreciative. On the nights I’m too tired to cook after a long day in the kitchen, he orders takeout, knowing exactly what would nourish me back to life.
We don’t really cook together, but he’s always there to load the dishes afterwards, to help me relax, to rub my feet when I’m done. He doesn’t need to be in the kitchen with me to take care of me.
That’s partnership, too.
We are in our first year of marriage, learning each other as we go. We recently got into an argument where I said something I immediately regretted: “I don’t feel like you support me.”
The moment it came out of my mouth, I knew it wasn’t true. Yas is the most supportive partner I’ve ever had. He assists me with catering when I need help, he gets Millie to school every morning when I’m already at work in the kitchen, he checks in with me genuinely every day, asking how my day was, and he talks so kindly and lovingly about me with others, lifting me up constantly.
So why did I say it? As we retreated to our corners of the ring until another time, I sat with what I said, I dug in, and tried to figure out why I said it.
It wasn’t really about him not supporting me; it was that I was clamoring for proof in that moment.
In a super embarrassing realization, I felt sad that Yas didn’t heart my Instagram stories. Somewhere deep inside, I was upset he didn’t post more about our wedding in October. Why didn’t he publicly perform his love for me the way I perform mine?
When I realized that’s what I was actually upset about, I felt shame immediately. Yas doesn’t even really “do” social media, and I was asking him to prove his love in a language he doesn’t speak because I didn’t trust that it was real without the performance.
I asked myself: Where did this come from? How did I get this way?
And I remembered there was probably a time in my life where I knew what I needed to feel supported, where I explicitly asked for it and was promptly told that it was unfair, or too much, or wrong of me to ask. I remember getting into arguments about love languages…about how there’s the love language we use to communicate love versus the love language we receive love with…and being told that “just wasn’t them” and they could only give the way they could.
Somewhere along the way, I learned to stop asking… to make myself smaller…to accept what I was given and be grateful for it, even when it left me empty.
And now, freaking A…I’m with someone who does support me, who actually shows up, who loves me without asking anything of me…and I’m so conditioned to not trust it that I’m looking for proof in all the wrong places.
I’m in the middle of dismantling walls I’ve built for years, and this one is a doozy.
Where’s the line between asking for what you need versus being content with what someone is able to give…and not faulting them for that?
How much of our need for validation should be put onto one person in the name of partnership, and how much should we take responsibility for ourselves?
Are those needs even real needs, or should we be intrinsically validated?
I’ve spent so many years people-pleasing and longing for external validation to feel worthy that I stopped trusting my inner voice when she said, “you’re enough.“ I could list out all the things I felt good about myself and be okay in that moment, but as soon as I finished said list, I would need someone else to validate those things in order for them to be really real.
With Yas, our neurodivergent love is one that’s intertwined. We both have triggers, we both have pasts, we have baggage, and all that comes with being humans building something new.
We are dealing with those things tucked away in our “closets”...the past relationships, the old wounds, the ways we’ve been hurt before. However, in the name of what’s right in front of our faces, we can keep that hurt from bleeding into our present.
And what’s there is our immense love and satisfaction with each other, just as we are, without needing the other person to explicitly validate it.
Object permanence is a motherfucker for ADHD brains.
Out of sight, out of mind. We forget what’s in the drawer until we need it, and then we remember exactly which random pile it’s in. For the sake of this metaphor, we forget those past hurts and baggage in our mental closets until it unfortunately seeps out...and it’s up to us to recognize it when it happens and not to falsely attribute it to the person who doesn’t deserve it.
But maybe there’s a gift in that closet…the baggage, the old scripts, the ways I’ve learned not to trust love…I can deal with those things, but keep them in their place. By keeping them there while I deal with them, and not letting them crash out into spaces they don’t belong…maybe I can finally start seeing what’s actually in front of me.
And what’s there…is Yas, my beautifully neurodivergent husband, my partner.
At the core, I know Yas. He’s AuDHD. And he literally loves me to the fucking moon.
When I see him in the morning before work and kiss him before going to sleep at night, I know without a doubt that he loves me. I know that I love him, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
And finally…I give it and myself a rest. I can actually exist and be myself in that love. I can stop asking myself…and stop asking him…to constantly prove it. I can just know.
It’s not the love I thought of when I was little. It’s not the traditional marriage where I perform and submit under his leadership because he’s the “man of the house”. It’s not the co-existence I preached I wanted when I was fresh off divorce…when I was terrified of being undervalued again.
It’s a partnership. A true partnership, messy and real and full of ADHD piles and open cabinet doors and two cats who love unconditionally. It’s a man who scrubs pans until they shine and a woman who’s learning, slowly, to trust that she’s enough.
Sushi doesn’t ask Yas to prove his love; he just curls up on his chest and purrs.
I’m learning each day from that tiny fur ball…that love doesn’t have to be proven to be real. It just has to be there.
And it is.