Audacity Will Transform Your Neurodiverse Relationship(+10 tips)

Audacity is the boldness or willingness to take risks, speak up, or act with confidence, especially when doing something unexpected or challenging. One of the most challenging things many of us will face in life is going after the life, relationship, and dreams that matter most to us — even when achieving those dreams might seem completely against all odds or impossible at the start.

A lack of audacity can cause you to miss out on a potentially successful life or relationship (even if you can't see it right now), repeatedly and subconsciously failing to make the changes, seek the answers, ask the hard questions, or recognize your own potential, worth, resources, and inner power.

This is true even if your dream seems "less common" than others — for instance, if your dream is to leave your relationship and start your life over, or instead to make a relationship that is currently struggling with your autistic partner flourish.

If you're seeking to grow and improve your relationship with your autistic partner, know that every day can bring challenges around communication, connection, and more — and it can leave you feeling discouraged about what may seem like your own or your partner's shortcomings (lack of patience, and so on). But consider: there are many neurodiverse couples facing your same challenges who have made it work, somehow, someway. The difference? They had the audacity to get answers, set goals, make choices, have hard conversations, and believe in themselves and their relationships — consistently, over and over.

I get it, though. After potentially decades together, having the courage and resiliency to keep believing in your partner and your relationship is hard — and, just as much, having the courage to walk away and believe in yourself is hard too. But making the choice that feels right to you, and then going after those goals, dreams, and visions even when they seem impossible right now, is what turns you from a "thinker" into an "achiever" — even if it's just improving in little steps each day.

Your dreams and goals require action, belief, resilience, support, and so much more — which is exactly what we're about to get into. But know this first: you have the choice to go after whatever dream you want, whether that's within a relationship, on your own, or something entirely unique to you. What's crucial is that you own whatever choice you make, and know that you don't need permission, approval, or social validation to have audacity.

Audacity doesn't require you to be younger, older, richer, smarter, taller, or shorter — it just requires you to show up and go after what you want and believe, and potentially, if your goal is making your relationship work, what your partner wants and believes too, for your future together.

Audacity won't stop you from having arguments, failing, hitting setbacks, or feeling embarrassed or angry — but what it will do is help you accept that these experiences are part of learning and growing, and that they'll potentially get you to your goals someday, becoming part of your story, which — like life — has its ups and downs.

Here are 10 strategies to start using audacity in your life and relationship today:

1. Own Your Choices: Decide what you "want," and then own it. If you choose to make things work with your partner (assuming your relationship is healthy and safe), accept that choice — regardless of anyone else's belief in its ability to work, or their approval. The same goes if you choose to leave your relationship, start your life over, or begin a new career. Make sure it feels right to you, and let that belief in your own authenticity carry you forward, even when others (or you, at times) don't believe in your goals.

2. Set Challenging Goals: Action will get you further than just "feeling" like you want a change. Set challenging goals — like learning to communicate with your partner better, going back to school for the degree you want, or joining a gym.

3. Invest in Your Goals: Investing in your goals daily is crucial. Investment doesn't have to mean thousands spent on retreats. It can be under $20 (for example, my book Love Across Spectrums is available right now on Amazon for less than $20 on Kindle) — or it can simply be investing your time: researching, practicing self-care so you can show up with a more stable mood with your partner, and so on.

4. Accept Mistakes: Know that when you choose to go after your goals, mistakes, arguments, misunderstandings, and strategies that don't work are all possible — even common — on a journey toward real change. Mistakes happen to everyone, and there may even be times when you want to give up. That's normal too. Don't be hard on yourself for a slip in unhealthy eating, getting frustrated with your partner, or anything else along the way.

5. Speak Up: On your journey of transformation, there will likely be times you need to speak up — especially when those close to you are sabotaging or being unsupportive of your dreams. This doesn't mean full-on confrontations every day, but it might look like simply saying "no" when someone invites you somewhere you don't want to go, "no thanks" to a food you're trying to avoid, or "I want us to hug right now" when you're craving your partner's touch. All of these are ways you might need to assert yourself to get results.

6. Get a Community: Exercising your audacity can feel isolating, especially if no one around you is going after a similar goal — like when you're sore and exhausted from working out consistently, and the people around you don't understand or tell you to just give up. Or when you're working on communication with your autistic partner, and they keep misunderstanding your efforts, leading to arguments. Having a community can help you vent, get support, and validate yourself when you see others going through similar things.

7. Take Breaks: Having audacity and consistency can be hard, which is why it's important to allow — and take — breaks as needed. That might look like taking a day to yourself for self-care away from trying to communicate with your partner, or taking time off from the gym to let your body heal. Breaks help you relax, take your foot off the mental gas, and come back replenished and ready to put in effort again. Burning yourself out isn't audacity — it's irresponsibility. Put your needs first.

8. Get Professional Help: Sometimes what stops us from having audacity goes deeper than goal-setting or support — it can trace back to things like childhood trauma, anxiety, or depression. For these situations, seek professional help so you can start building your audacity from the root up. Bonus: seeking professional help takes audacity all its own.

9. Get a Mentor (or Watch One): Similar to having a community to turn to, finding — or even just watching, through social media — a mentor can make a big difference. Seeing someone where you want to be can help your mind start to sketch out the map of how to get there in your own situation, while also giving you a chance to pick up strategies and tips, and the validation that they've likely felt the way you feel now.

10. Match Your Algorithm: The information, videos, and content we take in online subconsciously impact us too. So work on looking up the things you want more of in your life. Travel dreams? Look up travel vlogs. Want a better relationship? Look up communication tips for neurodiverse couples. The things you see online can also make you want to give up, or worsen your relationship through bad advice or general negativity. You're in control of your search history and who you follow — if it doesn't make you feel good or help you toward your goal, it's worth asking whether you want to keep it around.

And that's just a sample of some of the 200+ tips in my book, Love Across Spectrums — hope you enjoyed this post. Don't forget to hit like!