Through Different Lenses

Four ways your communication styles may not match — and what to do about it.

When neurodiversity is present in a relationship, partners often approach the same conversation through fundamentally different lenses. Neither lens is wrong. But when the two of you don't know which lens you're each using, even simple conversations can leave both of you feeling unheard.

The four lenses

• Logical ↔ Emotional — how you naturally enter a conversation: solving or feeling.
• Concrete ↔ Abstract — how you process: literal and specific, or layered and nuanced.
• Absolute ↔ Relative — how you frame statements: 'always/never' or 'sometimes/it depends.'
• Avoidant ↔ Insistent — how you respond to friction: pulling back, or pressing through.

Partner A

______________________________________________

Partner B

______________________________________________

How to read the result

• Two marks close together — this lens isn't where your friction lives. Skip ahead.
• Two marks far apart — this is structural. Most fights here won't resolve until you name the gap.
• Neither end is 'correct.' The middle isn't 'better.' The point is to see, not to grade.

Step 1 — Map your lenses

On each scale, mark where you sit on a typical day. 1 is the left side, 5 is the right side. Both partners answer.

Logical (lead with thinking) ↔ Emotional (lead with feeling)

Partner A

Rate from 1 to 5: ____

Partner B

Rate from 1 to 5: ____

Concrete (literal & specific) ↔ Abstract (layered & nuanced)

Partner A

Rate from 1 to 5: ____

Partner B

Rate from 1 to 5: ____

Absolute ('always/never') ↔ Relative ('sometimes/it depends')

Partner A

Rate from 1 to 5: ____

Partner B

Rate from 1 to 5: ____

Avoidant (pull back from friction) ↔ Insistent (press through friction)

Partner A

Rate from 1 to 5: ____

Partner B

Rate from 1 to 5: ____

Step 2 — Where's the gap?

Pick the lens with the biggest gap between your two marks — that's where most of your friction hides. Walk through these prompts together.

The lens we want to look at

______________________________________________

A recent conversation where this gap got us into trouble (specific)

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

What I needed in that moment that I didn't get (both partners answer — A and B)

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

One thing I can do to meet my partner partway on this lens (small, specific, doable this week)

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

______________________________________________

Partway is the goal: Neither of you is meant to end up on the other's side of a spectrum. Meeting partway, and knowing that's what you're doing, is the skill.

Go deeper

Ready for more? These lessons pick up where this worksheet leaves off.

• Where You Misread Each Other, from The Neurodiverse Couples Repair Program. The session where a neurodiverse couple finds where they guess each other's feelings wrong, in both directions, and writes down what was true.
• Two Operating Systems, from The Neurodiverse Couple. Why neurodiverse partners misread each other, and why the answer is to translate, not fix.
• Communication Breakdowns and Misreads, from The Neurodiverse Couple. Everyday communication breakdowns in neurodiverse couples — missed hints, flat tone read as anger — and concrete skills to ask clearly and repair.